Here's a blog I wrote about this
The time has come......so it was said. I think we all try to get along with people as best we can. Although that's never much been a priority in my life to which I think some of my family will testify, I've always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. We all have our ways of finding our way and we many times take a wrong turn or just storm off in determined wrongness only to have to circle back eventually. And so in the humanity of us all, I try (or at least I hope I try) to give people wiggle room and to bite my lip when I can for the sake of keeping things from boiling over into unnecessary hurtful incidents. And so when it comes to the rights of homosexuals in this country, because so many of my dearest friends are religious people I've tried to understand. But recently I came to a sad realization, that what I was doing in a sense of neutrality was actually taking a side, that old line, that sometimes 'not saying something IS saying something." or "All that it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." And so although I stand to lose a few friends for this I guess I have to make a stand because my silence equals complicity.
Most people who know me know that I have always advocated for the rights of homosexuals to marry. Way way back, even before it became the cause of the day. To me the story was simple. It was always about family. Since I had a broken family, I began to rely on my friends as my family. And so I built up a strange menagerie of people (mostly feeling the love after a couple of Long Island Iced Teas) that I "loved" and quite a few of them were gay guys who just did me the honor of hanging with me in a night club without pawing at me like a gorilla in heat. It was great fun dancing the night away at the Hippo. I saw a lot of casual flings and a few very serious partners.
But I eventually moved on from this life on the edge and settled down. After building my own family by getting married and having kids, it dawned on me that this society doesn't allow for the same sort of moving on for the gay people we know. In some strange way we seem to expect the homosexual male in society to dance the night a way in a disco, then pause long enough to make us lots of fabulous fashions and decorate up a storm. Then faster than you can do two snaps up it's fast forward until you are now some sage old man wandering through the streets in a Sting song. You can be a Queen, a diva, and you can be fabulous.........but uh, the guys making thanksgiving while the family comes over and the kids run around the table chasing the dog........not so much.
For me what is being denied homosexuals by resisting the idea of marriage, is not keeping the sanctity of marriage sacred for the straight people who want the right to get drunk in Vegas and what the helling it up to the altar......or for jailed murderers to legally be allowed conjugal visits........because that's what marriage often amounts to in the straight world.......oh that and marrying teenagers.....oh and divorce.......lots of it............but I digress..........
But what is really at stake here is the right to build a legally recognized family. That reality that says these are my children and this is my spouse. This is my family. And to be able to say that without feeling like you are kidding yourself or putting on some sort of bravado to stick it to the straight man. No, just to be able to be a family and have it count in the world and matter to you rather than it counting to you and mattering in the world but in the wrong way.
I've had a lot of round about discussions with friends who have pulled this new tactic of insidiously sliding the conversation into a no man's land of "Can't we all just get along?"........ "It's not MY point of view," they say " and I have nothing against homosexuals at all.........but I'm sorry God made it clear that they are sinners, and I'm not saying one sin is worse than the other, we're all sinners.......but acting on homosexual impulses is a sin in the eyes of God so I'm sorry I don't know the ways of God and who am I to judge God. I just can't support sin."
And of course, that's perfectly agreeable, that's perfectly fine isn't it? They aren't really condemning the homosexual, and if they really feel this strongly about their faith this is just one of the bad things stuck in there that they are trying to be compassionate about right?
Except I don't believe it. The bible, if you are using that, has a whole plethora of God policies, like not wearing gold, not setting up a pagan Christmas tree, not bowing down to engraven images........." There's plenty to choose from and yet for some reason, being gay which is mentioned just a few times is up there like a hot priority in the bible. Now if people do follow the rest of it that's one thing. But if you don't, and yet you concern yourself with stopping homosexuals from getting married, well then I guess you aren't rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar now, are you? The whole point of Romans 13 was that the secular world is the secular world and not a concern of those devoted to a spiritual world. In other words, you live in the world and so you must deal with it, but it is not your concern.
So why are so many people concerning themselves with it?
I see homosexuals as not "THEM" over "THERE" but as part of the world in which we all live. I consider these people my brothers and sisters across the board. And like any cranky prejudiced person there are things about this community that annoy me and that I don't like. However, they are members of the greater family, our family, family planet earth. You know........the people? And bigotry is bigotry no matter how finely you try to split the gay hair and make it not so, that you are oppressing people based on your own personal preference. We are all in this together in the world and people should never ever have to ask to get the right to build a family.
The gay hair gets split again with that sentiment as people pour out the accusations of pedophiles wanting to marry children and beastophiles wanting to marry donkeys and philophiles wanting to marry file cabinets and such things. And of course at this point the gay hair has already been split so finely that it just doesn't hold up any more.
But if I have to lose a few friends in the process, I guess that's what is going to come of this. I consider it oppressive and wrong and just downright cruel to deny two consenting loving adults the right to build a family together based on the objections of a 2000 year old book, that you don't seem to follow to a tee anyway. At the end of the day, that gay hair has been split away. And I'd rather lose a friend than support oppression based on ignorance.
PS Yes I know that Matthew 22 is Caesar.......check out Romans 13, you might be surprised.
